Sun and Rain
by Lyre of Sheliak
Summary: An interlude from their time by the Rio Diablo. Written for Edonohana as part of Trick or Treat Exchange 2019.


It was high summer, and the pure dry heat was fiercer than Alex Summers had ever experienced. Come winter, he knew, it would be just as bitterly cold.

Everyone had warned them about the weather, when they'd first said they were moving out here. That, and the isolation. But Alex loved this place, its unforgiving heat and bold color. He found himself looking forward to the cold, to snow-covered cacti and to white on those cliffs; to the next heat after that, to learning the desert in its every merciless season. And after the hurly-burly of their old lives, he and Lorna liked having some time to themselves just fine.

He could spend his whole life here, in the desert, with Lorna and their work, old rock below and the open sky above.

Today, he was checking readings on his seismometers—all of them distant enough from the house that his and Lorna's powers probably wouldn't impact the readouts, which made it quite a hike. Alex didn't mind. He'd even taken the opportunity to hike down to ford the river—sure, it would've been more efficient to drive down to the bridge, but he liked seeing the Rio Diablo itself. He didn't study rivers, of course, but there was something special about the ones in a desert.

Speaking of, though, something was wrong with this one.

Damn. The river had been blue a minute ago, clear as the sky overhead; now it looked closer to brown. Bad sign. Somewhere up the river there must be a storm, churning up the water with dirt and debris; even in the middle of summer, that could happen with no real warning. At least he was pretty high up the gorge.

Alex turned back and grimly started upwards again, choosing the steepest slope he could climb and moving as fast as he could. A flash flood was nothing to mess with; mutant or not, everyone was equal before the desert's whims. (Except, just maybe, a flyer like Lorna.)

By the time he heard the water rushing below—mere minutes later—he was well out of its way. He'd been lucky.

Pity he was on the wrong side of the river.

— — —

Well, no helping it. If he was lucky, the bridge would still be in place. He sighed and started in its

As it turned out, he didn't make it to the bridge after all. Lorna found him before he was a third of the way there.

"Hey, lover. Missed me?"

"Always."

Lorna landed almost in his arms. "I was worried for a bit there."

She was right, too; it could've been bad if he'd been much lower in the gorge. Alex hugged her back. "Me too."

"I got rained out up there," Lorna waved upriver in the vague direction of one of the sites she'd been studying, "so I came looking for you."

"The campers?" There had been a group of tourists in the area recently, and Alex had no idea if they knew to worry about flash floods. (He hadn't been worried about them today, not really.)

"I checked in on them earlier. They weren't anywhere near the river—up by the big mesa." She ran a hand through her damp hair. "The bridge washed out again, though, and there's no one on our side of the river."

Including them, just now. Not that that was really a problem, when one of them could fly. (And when their old junkheap of a car had enough metal in it for Lorna to carry it into the sky as well; if the bridge stayed out of commission too long, they'd have to make excuses next time they went to town, but they could do it without too much trouble.)

Visiting the final seismometer seemed like a bad idea, considering where it was; he'd find out tomorrow if it had survived the storm. "I guess we could work on our theses."

Lorna laughed. "Want a ride back?"

"Of course, lover." He kissed her, and she took them both into the sky.

— — —

As it turned out, neither of them got much more work done that evening. They tried, but they were too tired, too keyed up. Lorna kept revising the same sentences, over and over, occasionally reading them aloud (whether to Alex or to the toy dinosaurs on her desk, he wasn't entirely sure). Alex wrote down the new data from the seismometers, but didn't manage to do anything further.

That night Lorna cooked; in this kind of heat, she usually did, since her powers meant she didn't have to stand near the stove as she worked. They sat on the couch with their arms about each other, watching pots and pans move on their own accord. Lorna made the extra spoons do a silly dance, and Alex clapped.

After they'd eaten, he did the dishes—one thing wrong with this house, no dishwasher—as they listened to the radio. No X-Men in the news tonight—good. The Fantastic Four got a mention, but it was science news, not superhero stuff. (Sometimes Alex could envy Dr. Richards. Most of the time, he was just glad to be as far away from that life as he could get.)

As he drifted off to sleep, he thought,_ I'm glad we're here. Together_.

— — —

Alex woke to the sound of the metal in the house shivering, shaking, as Lorna reached out for it with her powers. Louder and louder.

A nightmare, then.

There was a crash from outside—either the windmill or the radio tower, Alex thought. Possibly both.

But at least it had woken Lorna up.

She didn't rush outside the way he would have; her powers didn't build up in the same way. Instead he felt her hold tighten—over metal, water, even blood—and then, gradually, ease. The noise calmed, replaced by an eerie silence; then normal noise resumed.

"Think I got the generator?" Lorna asked ruefully. "Probably," Alex replied. "I bet we can get it fixed quicker this time, though."

Lorna laughed, still a little shaky. "We've certainly had the practice."

"Regular pair of engineers, that's us." Sometimes it felt like they'd broken everything in this house. But they'd fixed it too, and that counted for something. "C'mon. I'll make cocoa."

— — —

They sat on the couch together, huddling for warmth and wrapped in blankets, and drank their cocoa as the sun slowly crept into the sky.

Bit by bit, the tension in Lorna's body eased; bit by bit, the light reached across the desert, soft at first, then throwing each detail into sharp relief. It was beautiful.

"I'm glad we're here," she murmured, her eyes on the horizon.

"Me too."

The light caught at Lorna's green hair and made it glow, a color Alex had seen nowhere else.

Today they'd go out there and see if the storm had done any damage to his equipment, or her site.

But for now, in the silence and early light, the warmth of each other's bodies and the chill of the air around them—this was a moment to treasure.


End file.
